When the Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers came out yesterday, showing a steeper-than-expected decline for many of the country’s large metropolitan newspapers, the papers themselves were ready with an explanation: They’re still pruning off that undesirable outlying circulation that advertisers don’t care about. The Dallas Morning News, which was off 9.3 percent, blamed such targeted circulation reduction for nearly all of its declines. “The overall declines in circulation can be attributed to planned business initiatives specifically aimed at improving audience quality,” said a statement released by the Belo-owned paper, citing a reduction of papers sold for under 50 percent of their cover price and the elimination of bonus-day and third-party distribution. “Without these initiatives, circulation for the period would have been up.” Other papers, too, claimed that such initiatives had eaten into their numbers. Meanwhile, analysts speculated that the dour economy may have also begun hurting papers, with struggling consumers cutting down on their extras. Metro newspapers are especially vulnerable because much of their news is also available for free online and on cable and broadcast television. John Morton, president of Morton Research and columnist for American Journalism Review, talks to Media Life about the reasons behind the 4.6 percent decline for daily papers, when things could start to get better, and why newspapers are still a good investment.

What's the most surprising or interesting thing that sticks out at you from these new circ numbers?
 
The declines were worse than they had been in recent periods. But that’s not a surprise because of two factors.
 
On top of the long-term declines that began in the late ‘80s, you’ve got the current economic malaise, which causes people to cancel subscriptions and stop buying newsstand copies.
 
And then you’ve got the impact of a lot of metropolitan papers deliberately cutting back circulation. It’s hard to measure how much those two additional factors contributed, but I’d imagine it’s about a percentage point collectively.
 

As you mentioned, many newspapers have been cutting down on their outlying circulation by design. How much of the circ declines at major metro papers are still due to these voluntary cuts?
 
It’s what contributed to the decrease. It made it worse. Those two things, the economy and the circulation cutbacks, probably increased the declines by maybe about a point.
 
And when will it all end? Good question. The economic outlook for the rest of this year and next, by anybody’s guess, is pretty bleak, so that’s not likely to improve. Eventually the newspapers that are contracting circulation will cycle through it, but I’m not sure we’ve seen the end of all that yet.
 

How much is natural attrition, and how much is tied to the slowdown of the economy -- households cutting out extras like newspapers?
 
There’s no way to measure that, but once the ABC comes out with it annual audits you can analyze where the declines were. And then we’ll get some idea of how much was price resistance and how much was deliberate.
 

Nationally focused dailies like USA Today and Wall Street Journal held steady while nearly everyone else declined. Do you expect these papers to continue to buck the circulation downtrend and why or why not?
 
Yeah, I think they’re not being affected as much by local economic conditions. And certainly they’re not cutting back on circulation. So I suspect they’re having better luck at hanging on to their circulations.
 
Part of The Journal’s performance I think is due to the significant change in its focus, becoming more of a general-interest paper than it had been before.
 
Now it’s interesting that The New York Times had declines, and again we won’t know until the annual audits, but I’d expect most of that to be from the local circulation rather than national.
 

How much longer until we start to see circ declines flattening? (Right now, they're still getting bigger.)
 
Well, at least from the advertising perspective, it won’t be until auto and real estate come back, and I don’t think anyone’s counting on that for next year. And who knows for 2010.

What's the most important thing for media buyers and planners to remember about newspapers as this latest round of numbers comes out?
 
That they’re still very large presences in their markets, even with the declines. And they are still efficient purveyors of advertising.
 
If you go around the country, still the major ad vehicle in most markets is the newspaper. Their position may have weakened some, but it hasn’t changed. Circulation cuts don’t really significantly affect that readership that advertisers want, which is in their core market areas. The reason papers are cutting that circ is because they’re not making advertising profits on it, and it costs a lot to deliver it.